What color is this sneaker?

Some people see the shoe as gray with teal accents, while others see it as
pink with white accents

Vans sneakers are pink with white accents. But people see this sneaker as different colors because the photo was taken in bad lighting.
This is the same photo without the blue tint.

It’s the same situation with the debate over the color of the dress in 2015.

How did this happen?
Our eyes are unable to register the range of colors presented here, leading some people to see the shoe as grey and teal and others to see it as pink and white.

Depending on your sensitivity to light, you’ll see a totally different shoe.

Explained more:

A layer of tissue at the back of the eye, called a retina, contains cells called photoreceptors.
The photoreceptors convert light rays into nerve signals, which are then processed by nerve cells in the inner retina, sent to the brain, and translated as images.

The two types of photoreceptor cells are known as rods and cones. Rods are responsible for peripheral and night vision. They detect brightness and shades of gray. Cones are responsible for day vision and color perception.

Humans have a low concentration of rod receptors and a high concentration of cone receptors, which is why we can’t see as well at night but can detect colors better.

We have three types of cones, each tuned to pick up green, red, or blue wavelengths of light. When light hits our eyes, the receptors turn these colors into electrical signals that are sent to the brain. Our brains determine the color that we see by blending the signals that each receptor senses.

In other words, our individual sensitivity to the blue background lighting of the photo is changing how we see the object in the image.

The differences in color perception are probably related to how our brains are interpreting the “quantity of light that comes into our retina.”

“Some people are deciding that there is a fair amount of illumination on a gray and teal (or less reflective) shoe,” “Other people are deciding that it is less illumination on a pink and white shoe (it is in shadow, but more reflective).”